No, Ruth wasn't written in 1000 BCE

 In this previous two posts I discussed the following image:

In the first of those two posts, I noted that "[I]n general, this table seems to date biblical books as soon as possible after the latest events that they reference or suppose." Now, certainly, no text can date earlier than the latest events that they reference or suppose as past events. If, for instance, a gospel supposes that the fall of Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period has occurred, then it must postdate 70. It simply must. And certainly, as a general rule any given text could date as soon as possible after the latest event referenced or supposed. Again using the case of the canonical gospels, I would contend that none reference or suppose the fall of Jerusalem as past events. Indeed, in each case, I would argue that the latest event clearly referenced or supposed as having occurred are the various experiences of Jesus after his crucifixion. There is, I would argue, nothing that absolutely excludes a date for any of the gospels as early as the thirties CE. It does not however—and this is absolutely crucial—follow that any or all of the canonical gospels do date that early. In fact, with the partial exception of Mark's Gospel (which I date to c. 40), I would argue that there are good reasons on other grounds to suppose that they do not date this early.

This is where we get into the various other sorts of matters that we need to take into account. The Book of Ruth can help us illustrate the significance of such matters. This graphic above dates this book to 1050–1000 BCE. I'm not entirely sure why it needs to be given a fifty-year range like this, especially when clearly composite texts such as those found in the Pentateuch are dated to exact years. But in any case, let us suppose that the graphic proposes 1000 BCE for the compositional date of Ruth. Such a date is not strictly speaking impossible. The Book of Ruth claims to narrate how David's great-grandparents—Ruth and Boaz—met and married. An "orthodox" chronology of kings of Israel and Judah would date the beginning of David's reign to c. 1010. If the events depicted in the Book of Ruth happened perhaps eighty to a hundred years earlier, then the possibility that they were written down c. 1000 cannot be excluded, and certainly early in David's reign makes for a plausible time when someone might be interested in writing down their story. Indeed, one might well argue that this is the time that the Book of Ruth makes the greatest sense. After all, one might reason, would it not continue to mention Solomon, Rehoboam, etc., and the rest of the David up to the time of composition? But then again, David remains a prominent figure within Israelite and later Jewish historical memory for quite some time (witness the fact that approximately a millennium after the typical date for his death Jesus is being cast as his ultimate successor). If one is interested primarily in showing Ruth and Boaz to be the forebears of the Davidic line, then it would probably suffice simply to show that they are David's great-grandparents and end there. So, while the Book of Ruth almost certainly postdates David's ascent, it does not follow that it was written during his reign.

Still, in principle, a date during David's reign remains a live option, given reference only to the latest events referenced or supposed by the text. Against this, it might be objected that Israel lacked the means to write down texts such as Ruth at this point. The evidence for such lack however is largely negative. That is to say, the inability to write is inferred from the lack of inscriptional material from this period. The vagaries of archaeological preservation and recovery are such that we probably cannot exclude the possibility of a limited capacity to write narratives such as the Book of Ruth c. 1000 BCE. Nonetheless, historical linguistic work on the Book of Ruth has revealed a combination of relatively early and relatively late features of Biblical Hebrew (a certain prominent work discussing this matter a few years ago identified the Book of Ruth as possessing "Transitional Biblical Hebrew"). The presence of such relatively late features should make us wary of seeing Ruth as a text predating the full flourishing of Israelite literature. Given the historical linguistic data, date in perhaps say the sixth-century BCE seems much more plausible than a date in the eleventh, even if it does not reference or suppose any date subsequent to c. 1000 BCE (this of course doesn't exclude the possibility that it preserves authentic historical knowledge of the eleventh century, etc., etc., and similar disclaimers).